Aaron Swartz: How To Get A Job Like Mine | Hacker News Reader

Aaron Swartz: How To Get A Job Like Mine

aaronsw.jottit.com

338 pointspathik17 comments

Every morning I wake up and check my email to see which one of my projects has imploded today, which deadlines I'm behind on, which talks I need to write, and which articles I need to edit.

Maybe, one day, you too can be in the same position. If so, I hope I've done something to help.

A great talk, a great writeup, with a sad end when you read it today after the sad news. With all my respect, this is not a sustainable way of living your life. Expectation of high stress every day makes anyone collapse.

Indeed, I was also surprised by the 'Say yes to everything.' statement.

I'm currently doing nearly the exact opposite, to reduce my stress levels and avoid a burn out. Saying yes to everything might work when you are young, full of energy, and without kids, but in my case, with two young kids, saying no to a lot of distractions makes much more sense.

This was an incredible piece. His earnestness and clarity is very evident, and you can tell he was once just a very curious kid with a sharp ability to focus. I'm grateful to have read it.

At the same time, I can't help but feel like he's talking directly to me. This is the kind of person who impacts you just through the sheer fact that he -lived-. As for the people harping about the notion of stress that he mentions at the end, I think it's meant differently. I think he means he's happy to have achieved what he has.

I also just watched his talk "How we stopped SOPA", and his speaking style echoed this article.

There is a quote that I've always tried to live by, which I think sums up Aaron's spirit.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

He mentions past thoughts of suicide in this piece.

I'm having a hard time reconciling this with the strong, happy young man I would see at conferences a decade ago. First Ilya, now Aaron.

Its numbing how you don't realise how much somebody on the other side of the world has affected your life until you find out until something tragic enough happens to them that it makes the news...

I've accepted it as life. You are unlikely to realize how much or how little you've affected people on the other side of the world too. I mourn Schwartz's passing, but I am not at all surprised that someone great has passed away. On a planet of 7 billion people, people pass away all the time, great, horrible, and mediocre. I try to recognize everyone's contributions, but I will not fret over making sure everyone gets their due recognition. In the off-chance I become great, I do not expect anything more in the sure-chance I pass away, and I hope that the attention I get is only to reflect on what still needs to be done, much like the attention we are currently giving Schwartz's passing.

You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. You thought we could lead by example. You thought the rules could be bent but not break… you were wrong. The world is cruel. And the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair. funny .. the FBI terminates its cases with fire ; the US Attorney with suicide .. there is a long history of this ... Waco, Ruby Ridge, Abbie Hoffman SDS. the Prozac sanction : So they take a deposition after 3 hours offer you a drink of water after 6 more hours they reschedule more .. the drug in the drink goes to work. It's only a matter of time from there ...

> we did agree on another good idea: a wiki to tell students what different jobs are like. That site should be launching soon.

Did this ever happen?

I don't know, but I just read that on his "howtoget" and I'm eager to see if anyone else does know.

I have personally attempted this. It's a pretty large undertaking.

I couldnt load this. Found it cached via google:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ViHqr5j...

Me neither, chrome wouldn't even let me ignore the dodgey SSL cert.

Different formatted, cached version: http://thequeue.org/cr?id=https%3A%2F%2Faaronsw.jottit.com%2...

Assume nobody else has any idea what they're doing either. A lot of people refuse to try something because they feel they don't know enough about it or they assume other people must have already tried everything they could have thought of. Well, few people really have any idea how to do things right and even fewer are to try new things, so usually if you give your best shot at something you'll do pretty well.

What a fantastic insight, not to mention a real motivational boost.

Also mirrored here: https://gist.github.com/4517310

Jottit is such an incredible service. I hope it carries on.

loved reading this. thanks for sharing it.

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